


consumption

by charbroiled



Series: Sanguine Throne [5]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Animal Death, Blood and Violence, Descent into Madness, Edelich AU, Gen, Injury, Shakespearean Sonnets, Vampirism, cooking with metodey, crimson flower but it's a metal album au, i tagged the other two but they don't really show up it's real metodey hours now, metodey again, no pet death i promise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-15
Updated: 2019-11-15
Packaged: 2021-01-31 01:14:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21437749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charbroiled/pseuds/charbroiled
Summary: ten items which may satisfy a devouring hunger which grows from inside
Series: Sanguine Throne [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1535759
Comments: 10
Kudos: 18
Collections: Sanguine Throne (Edelich) AU Multiverse





	consumption

**Author's Note:**

> More or less a direct sequel to [golgotha](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/sanguinethrone/works/21302897) and riffing from [pentagonbuddy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pentagonbuddy/)'s excellent work [convalescence](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/sanguinethrone/works/21425854), so you may want to read those first. 
> 
> If not, AU premise is that our benevolent and wise unifying Emperor Edelgard ate Rhea's bone marrow and now her eternally flowing blood causes a powerful, vampiric addiction.

  1. ** THE RAT**

“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” 

Metodey asked the rat. Its beady eyes, dulled in the grip of death, stared back at him; its back legs, limp from the shattered of the spine, dangled brokenly from his fingers; the front of the rat had split like a ripe front under his teeth. He swallowed the flesh and fur and licked his lips, despite the revolted shudder from the gutter mud that still clung to the matted little corpse.

“No. Absolutely not.”

He tossed the rat over his shoulder with disdain, and slid down the sewer wall. His damp uniform stuck to him, and he stank. Of old blood, mostly. Mostly. He hadn't bathed in…. Well. Disgusting.

His shoulder and abdomen pulsed with pain. The wounds Minister von Vestra had inflicted on him weren't healing well, not without magic or the Emperor's blood (and to think only days ago healing had still seemed a mere insult to his profession), and he hadn't dared to return to the palace or even let himself into a sickhouse. He couldn't be seen anywhere the Emperor's spymaster had eyes, which… regrettably, was everywhere. He wouldn't even have the-- pleasure-- of thrashing around under von Vestra's gloved grip before he died. How careless of him! Metodey stifled a giggle. 

No, it would be a knife through his ribs in his restless sleep this time. It wasn't as though Metodey himself hadn't served as the Emperor's blade before, even back when she was merely the Flame Emperor, a needling charade to chip at the foundation of the Church. How long ago had that been? Nevermind that, who even cared?

Foremost to his mind was how hungry he was. Starving. Not for food, nor even flesh, no, only blood, the Emperor's holy blood, their sacrament, their meat and their drink and their blessing and poison he would drink so deeply from Her--  
  
He found his claws-- claws! how novel-- digging into the sides of his head, again, the smallest of pinprick stings against skin he'd already rubbed raw. Was he lightheaded?

Yes.

Definitely.

Too bad he'd thrown away the rat. He needed to grind _ something _ between his teeth to stave off this craving before he attacked someone. That would get him the knife under his ribs for sure.

  1. **THE PIGEON**

The _ something _ turned out to be a bird which bobbed just a few steps too close to the entrance of the sewer. Metodey cooed as he bit into it, crushing the shoulder and wing. The feathers, if it were possible, tasted worse than rat hair. Dusty. Chalky. They dried out his throat swallowing them. The flesh was oily, and worst of all, the little body had barely any blood in it. He itched now and the fluff stuck to the cuts in his lips. He was more parched than before he'd caught this crusty bird.  
  
No. This was no good. He'd be better off with rats.

He wouldn't eat rats.

  1. **THE SNAKE**

He watched people pass by through the drain, hurrying along on errands or affairs or whatever secrets ran under their fragile skin in their shit-stained boots. He could _ smell _ which were nobles and which were merely unconsecrated sheep as they walked by. It made the back of his mouth water, which just stung on all the more. He'd chosen a roost, near one of the wilting little street gardens, hoping for something … palatable. Not a rat. Not a pigeon. Not a person, which would draw too much attention, though he wanted it, he wanted it more every time they tripped by so carelessly.

Eviscerated. That was how he felt. Hollowed out from collarbone to hip. And his mouth was dry and every little cut and scab from the pigeon's poking bones stung in his mouth and lips and his eyes were so dry it hurt to blink. He'd been sick before; dehydrated, feverish. This was… this was worse, because relief was so close. Just within the palace walls. She hadn't condemned him to death-- no, she'd looked down at him with… what was that expression, exactly? Now that he concentrated on it, he couldn't remember exactly what her face looked like, just how the blood warmed and coated his throat.  
  
Pale. Definitely pale. Benevolent, maybe? Yes. Benevolent. Forgiving. Not like the shadow at her side. Oh, oh-- perhaps-- if he drank deeply enough-- she could drink of _ him? _  
  
There was a thought. His hands were trembling. He tried to think of the opera instead.

Just as quickly as his thoughts stuttered from beat to beat, a movement in the grass caught his eye. He had to climb half out the iron grating, but he caught the culprit-- a snake. A little black snake, with yellow eyes, winding around his fingers in agitation. It bit him, so, fairly, he ripped into it. The skin split easily, not like the pigeon, and the burst of blood in his mouth-- sweet relief-- he had to steady himself against the cobblestones.  
  
Too quickly the feeling was gone, the blood dissatisfying sticky, fetid mud in his mouth with only the barest hint of copper and satiation. The slick flesh twisting under his fangs, the leathery scales the texture of gloves-- it reminded him of the spymaster. 

He still sucked the creature hollow, but only from spite.

  1. **THE SQUIRREL**

"--I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought; with old woes new, wail my dear time’s waste… hm."

Metodey paused in the recitation to contemplate the couplet. Dear time? He had a lot of time. And eating wasn't a waste. The opposite, in fact. It was a-- gnawing-- necessity. Well, the activity wasn't why he'd picked this specific sonnet-- he just needed a distraction from the gnawing hunger. Perhaps he should have gone into theatre? His own voice was the only voice he'd heard in days, and the sound of it, even muffled in this filthy brick hole, even hoarse and rasping from thirst, reminded him that he was alive. More or less.  
  
The other thing that reminded him of being alive was the wriggling squirrel he was slowly crushing in his grip. 

He'd lain in wait for a full day for this squirrel. Lying there, bored, watching, reminded him, a little, of the war, holed up in ditches, under shrubs or… oh, but in the war he'd been fighting alongside comrades, and sometimes he got to wash his clothes, and his beautiful hair hadn't been caked to his head with indescribable filth. It was those little details that really reminded him of how poorly he was doing. 

But not dying! 

No. In fact, he was getting better. The cuts around his mouth had scabbed up, and the wound on his throat… well. It hadn't ripped back open when he'd lunged for the squirrel, which was a marked improvement. So he just needed to quench the hunger. Then he could rest, and heal. His tongue grazed the tip of his aching canines. Finish the line, then eat. Finish the line.

"Then I can drown an eye unused to flow…"

The squirrel's little claws scrabbled against the back of his hand, but the poor thing couldn't find purchase. He considered it with an understanding pity. He, too, had been prey. Once. Hopefully the rodent would find some meager solace in their kinship. Before it died.

"...for precious friends hid in death’s dateless night." Or deathless-- weren't they deathless, now? Oh, the squirrel's heart pulsed so fast against his palm. Whatever the rest of the sonnet was, it wasn't as important as that. Why was he denying himself his feast? Who did he think he was? The Emperor's black snake? 

He pinched his fangs through the squirrel's neck. He almost went weak with the smell of blood. When torn, the skin came off so easily, the body opened under him, he could dig through the ribcage and pull out the innards--  
  
Metodey rolled the tiny organs against his tongue, soft, ripe fruits that bruised under his molars, and then threw up.  
  
A rat.  
  
It was just another rat.

  1. **THE JACKRABBIT**

Everyone ate rabbits. An ordinary meal. His face being coated in the blood of it, that was… well, almost an expected sight among the nobles, wasn't it? Which, of course, he was one of. Lordly, not some filthy peasant's child plucked off the street to fight alongside black-robed men against a white tyrant, asword placed his hand in exchange for luxury. His gift, no, his_ right _ for having had some trace of old saint's blood bubble back in him from whatever abyss it had been bred into.

Some impassioned statement about a future not ruled by blood in the name of Emperor ought to come next, he thought, as she loved to hear, but his mind was hazy with hunger.

The rabbit was the closest, so far. The biggest, the most… filling. It blunted the craving. So the mess was… excusable. Not so different than in a butcher's back room.  
  
And the ah… snuffling noises he'd slowly realized he was making, buried deep in the quivering chest of the beast. How his teeth scraped against the wet collarbone. That was no different than drinking bone broth. In a dining hall. Stew in a bowl of bone and fur. Slurping. Ordinary. Satisfying.  
  
His hands were shaking so badly.

At least he was getting better at finding the throats of these creatures.  
  


  1. **THE LAPDOG**

As it turned out, there weren't many rabbits in the city. Not that Metodey could catch. Not from the sewer, not at night, when people couldn't see him. More squirrels, even in the little patch of garden, but those were just rats with hair on their tails. There were dogs, though. And cats, but the cats kept their distance from him. The smell? He couldn't smell it anymore, the sewer, only the blood when some bloated leech walked by, and every little drifting taste made his mouth water and his teeth hurt.

Sometimes the passerby-- not the leeches fat with her blood, the leeches barely walked, they rattled by in carriages or on horses, untouchable-- had little dogs with them, or larger ones, on leashes, and the animal would growl low at the grates and bare their yellowed teeth.

Metodey scrambled back into his shadows-- lest someone look down and catch a glimmer of his eyes and call for guards-- but he wanted to growl back. No, he wanted to rip their throats out and wallow in it. Surely they contained more blood than twenty... thirty rats. A veritable feast!

But there were so many eyes on the street, and they would turn him in. How many hours did he wait, crouched, for the sound of snuffling and the clack of claws and boots by the alley he had chosen when the only light was flickering lamps? Murmuring "...the star to every wand'ring bark" to himself in that soft tone, as though the stars were still bright in the black sky over Enbarr's illuminated night.

Long enough that when he hauled himself up onto the cobbled streets a seizing pain locked his traitor legs and the bloodless peasant had a moment to shout and yank the animal away and his claws barely grazed it. He snarled and bared his teeth and went for his sword to kill this swine and its dog but he didn't have a sword at his side, only the little dagger in his boot for emergencies, and-- was this an emergency?  
  
By that time both of them were more than a lunge away and calling for the watch.  
  
The watch would see him. He had to flee. And he did, scrambling back into the hole he'd so carefully chosen and then continuing down a long, long way from it.

When he finally felt he could sit and check himself for wounds, the worst of the injuries besides his swollen side and cramping legs was that he lost the garden patch and the squirrels that frequented it.

  1. **THE FOX**

The sewers extended to under Enbarr's hospital. Well, it titled itself a hospital, but it was as much a research institute as it was a sickhouse. And it was too close to the palace for comfort, but what sort of comfort was left for him? Metodey knew it had her blood in it. He needed it. He could nearly taste it in the runoff.  
  
Metodey had begun to chew his own hand, the fleshy pad between his pointer and thumb. The taste helped more than the little rodents. But not by much; he needed his hands, to catch the rodents, and there was so little of Her Majesty left in him, so little that it rung in him like the tolling of Enbarr University's bell which he could hear, muffled, through the stone vaults of the sewer. His voice from his cracking throat was a hateful mumble not so far off from the black snake's low drawl and he despised it but in the evening and night and early morning there was no other sound so he spoke to himself.

“O! how shall summer's honey breath hold out against the wrackful siege of battering days?”  
  
Not well, he decided. Not summer, but honey, the sweet and sticky honey he imagined quenching this incessant hunger was crimson and holy and had the Emperor herself reached out a hand to him and asked him to separate his arm from his body at the shoulder with only his boot dagger in exchange for tasting her blessing again he would have done so gladly.

The red fox he caught rooting through one of the hospital's trashpits -- its fur was red like her flag, eyes black as the eagle, belly white, then blooming red out from the wound like her wrist, and warm and large enough for him to bury his face in it gasping. The flush of feeding crested through him and he felt alive again.  
  
But so briefly.  
  
Only briefly.

  1. **THE FALCON**

Metodey prowled beneath the institute, wistfully imagining the rows and rows of beds above with their silent and he dug through the trash the fox had dug through, looking for … for rags or vials or razors or bones or fingers or anything he could at least chew on, anything to blunt this swollen hunger that numbed his limbs and slit his chest and no longer even allowed him the void of sleep, but there was nothing. They burned it, he knew they burned it all, it would be sacrilege to simply _ discard _ a piece of her, but he wished, he wished they would. Or burn his ragged uniform, at least. It crunched when he moved, stiff with offal.  
  
The image of the flag in the fox's entrails haunted him. It wasn't good enough, it wasn't like _ her _ enough. There were black hawks in the city, peregines, he was fairly certain they'd been called by someone other than him. Smaller than eagles, and they hunted in the day.  
  
For them, Metodey set out the emptied rats in hidden corners.  
  
"From sullen earth sings hymns at heaven's gate, for thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings..."  
  
He watched the rats' carcasses through his fingers, his breath on his raw palm a restless itch but no more restless than the hunger. Mostly he got crows. Black pigeons. He ate them anyway. Sometimes he was sure his clever carcass moved, inching itself away from him. Always alway. 

"...that then I scorn to change my state with kings."

There was no need for kings under the Emperor. How lucky, how lucky he had been to be chosen by her, to hear her declare her dreams in her quiet voice and among the first to lose himself in her blood. He reminded himself of this, the same poem again, again, until--  
  
Until at last, at last, a peregrine alit and he caught it and though its talons and beak took their own price of flesh from his arm he crooned in triumph to it as his own bleeding talons split it open.  
  
He drank deep and stroked the feathers and purred to it until the warmth faded from its body. “The worst was this," he whispered to it in his rasping traitor's voice. "My love was my decay.”  
  
Its hollow bones were delicate between his teeth, just as he imagined hers would be.

  1. **THE GOAT**

He no longer remembered choosing to hunt, only the exuberance of feeding as he dug through the goat's wet flesh, his dagger forgotten somewhere in the beast's lungs, the ribs cracked open to expose the fruit, his boots ankle-deep in the coiling entrails, the echo of the animal shrieks singing in his ears. He gulped down the hot blood. It coated his nose and ran down his chin and filled his chest with joy, joy that made his eyes and cheeks wet, and all he could smell was it, crimson to his elbows and his knees.

One of the bloated robed leeches had brought this sacrifice in to the courtyard and tied it there as if it were an offering for him. It was white-- silver in the night, just as Her hair-- and it had screamed and kicked when it died with his talons in it in a way that made his whole body shiver so pleasantly even just to think of it. Even the fur, the short fur didn't bother so him badly to choke down, but he dreamed of softer skin splitting beneath his teeth. 

Of course the scream had brought the leeches back before he fully gorged and he had escaped without the dagger but with a fistful of the wet muscle and even back in his stinking hole it had soothed his throat when he so carefully pulled and swallowed it down.  
  
He treasured it, that memory. He licked it clean until it was empty. Dimly he was aware of everything else receding before Her lapping, gnawing, eviscerating hunger.

    1.   
** THE OTHER**

AS YOUR BOUNTY DOTH APPEAR

AND YOU IN EVERY BLESSED SHAPE WE KNOW

He counted the leeches who came and went and how they drank and how deeply and how they spoke or laughed or quietly, quietly cried. The quivering scent of Her blood was in the merest hint in the sewers under the hospital and it rose and fell with the day like the tide and if the filth with this barest hint of Her blood could have eased the weeping wound in his chest and in his side and in his throat he would have gladly choked it down until it drowned him but it did not and no matter what he ate he was empty and his fingers scabbed around his claws and even chewing the scabs and sucking down his own thin blood did nothing, there was nothing that would fill him, only the communion, and he deserved it, he deserved it as much as any of these other parasites or more for hadn't they been paraded and rewarded for it and what had Fortune granted him but this?

Hadn't She held out her hand and promised to lift up all the parasites to turn on each other like equals in their ravenous packs twisting in against each other in their sleek fur and under the skin who would have thought there would be so much blood in them?

His hair shed in clumps when he worked his claws through it. He needed to drink. He deserved to drink. It was only a matter of waiting, because finally, finally, he had found Her. Another lie-- that She couldn't walk. She smelled of roses, not of Her holy blood, but that, that could be hidden. He'd seen Her now and Her silver hair and Her flush eyes wrapped in the robes of a professor, a ghost in the evening, without her gruesome shadow, and She went to and fro and to and fro from the hospital in pattering steps and now She had gone to and he was waiting, just waiting, for the hour She emerged again from the black gaping maw of the door. Counting minutes, crouched in darkness by the trees, counting down the tolling of the university bell, each quarter hour, each closer, now counting--

counting best to be with you alone,  
then better’d that the world may see my pleasure;  
sometime, all full with feasting on your sight,

and by and by, clean starved for a look

possessing or pursuing no delight

save what is had, or must

from you 

be

took

**Author's Note:**

> The poetry snippets are all from Shakespeare's love sonnets. I forgot to note down which was which while I was writing, but sticking any of those lines into a search engine will bring up the full sonnet immediately. Sorry! If I use more obscure public domain poetry for other pieces, I'll footnote them responsibly, I promise.


End file.
